I think that there is a deeper, more fundamental theological (actually moral) problem with this AIW.
It is written from the viewpoint of oppressors versus the oppressed when, in actuality, no one’s hands are clean. Both sides have committed transgressions, and both sides have legitimate grievances.
As Solzhenitsyn writes in The Gulag Archipelago, those years gave him striking insight into the reality of human nature:
It was granted me to carry away from my prison years on my bent back, which nearly broke beneath its load, this essential experience: how a human being becomes evil and how good. In the intoxication of youthful successes I had felt myself to be infallible, and I was therefore cruel. In the surfeit of power I was a murderer, and an oppressor. In my most evil moments I was convinced that I was doing good, and I was well supplied with systematic arguments. And it was only when I lay there on rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains … an unuprooted small corner of evil.
Solzhenitsyn goes on to say:
Since then I have come to understand the truth of all the religions of the world: They struggle with the evil inside a human being (inside every human being). It is impossible to expel evil from the world in its entirety, but it is possible to constrict it within each person.
This realization led Solzhenitsyn to recognize the problem with revolutions, namely, “They destroy only those carriers of evil contemporary with them…. And they then take to themselves as their heritage the actual evil itself, magnified still more.”
So it is more important to talk about the nature of evil without respect to which side is responsible for it. It is more important to end evil regardless of who is perpetrating it.
In the month following October 7 there were two newspaper articles that speak to this.
The Extreme Ambitions of West Bank Settlers
A leader of the settlement movement on expanding into Gaza, and her vision for the Jewish state.
By Isaac Chotiner November 11, 2023
For decades, Daniella Weiss has been one of the leaders of Israel’s settlement movement. Weiss became involved in settlement politics in the wake of the 1967 war. In the early seventies, her family moved to the settlements in the West Bank and she later served for a decade as mayor of Kedumim, a community in the north. She has also been arrested numerous times, including for assaulting a police officer and interfering with an investigation into the destruction of Palestinian property. More recently, she has been affiliated with the Nachala settlement organization, which helps younger settlers establish illegal outposts in the West Bank, an initiative that’s controversial even among the settler community. (Weiss is a neighbor and an ally of Bezalel Smotrich, the extremist minister of finance, who has said that the Palestinian people do not exist and that Palestinian communities need to be erased; he also lives in Kedumim.)
Chotner: We saw some horrible images on October 7th of what happened to Israeli children, and now we see some horrible images in Gaza of what is happening to Palestinian children. When you see Palestinian children dying, what’s your emotional reaction as a human being?
Weiss: I go by a very basic human law of nature. My children are prior to the children of the enemy, period. They are first. My children are first.
Chotner: We are talking about children. I don’t know if the law of nature is what we need to be looking at here.
Weiss: Yeah. I say my children are first.
NOTE: This is the nature of evil. This is a basic dehumanization.
BUT:
In Israel, There Is Grief and There Is Fury. Beneath the Fury, Fear.
By Bret Stephens Nov. 10, 2023
Later, at an army headquarters in Tel Aviv, I was given a private screening of some 46 minutes of footage of the events of Oct. 7, assembled from security cameras, smartphone videos recorded by victims and survivors, and the GoPro footage taken by the terrorists themselves. I watched as one terrorist casually murdered a father with a hand grenade and then raided his fridge while two orphaned boys whimpered in fear. I watched another who tried to behead a wounded Thai field worker with a garden hoe while shouting “Allahu akbar.” I listened to a third who, in a phone call to his parents, boasted, “I killed more than 10 Jews with my bare hands!”
“That’s a point that needs to factor in to any thoughtful analysis of the Jewish state’s predicament. There’s an asymmetry in this conflict, but it’s not about the preponderance of military power. Israel’s goal in this war is political and strategic: to defeat Hamas as the reigning power in Gaza, even though there will be unavoidable cost in innocent lives, since Hamas operates among civilians. But Hamas’s goal is only secondarily political. Fundamentally, it’s homicidal: to end Israel as a state by slaughtering every Jew within it. How can critics of Israeli policy insist on a unilateral cease-fire or other forms of restraint against Hamas if they can’t offer a credible answer to a reasonable Israeli question: How can we go on like this?”
This essay gets to the heart of the problem with the oppressor/oppressed formulation:
Your Empathy is Killing Us
@Mushon Zer-Aviv Nov 9, 2023
“Why binary partisanship in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is hurting both sides, and what to do about it.”
“It shouldn’t be hard to empathize with the pain of the Israeli victims, or the pain of the Palestinian ones. But paradoxically, it seems almost impossible to empathize with both sides at the same time. Why is that?”
“In his book “Against Empathy” Bloom goes further to argue that empathy should not serve as a moral compass. Instead he advocates for compassion which goes beyond feeling another’s pain; and involves a deep sense of concern and a genuine desire to alleviate suffering.”
“Ten days after the Hamas attack, philosopher Slavoj Zizek delivered a powerful address at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Zizek not only condemned Hamas unequivocally but went further to justify Israel’s right to retaliate. Despite some protests from the audience, he dedicated most of his address to exploring the background of the occupation and the Israeli government’s ongoing systematic oppression of the Palestinian people. Without siding with either Hamas or the Israeli government, Zizek managed to present a crucial analysis of the current situation and its history. He went on to argue:”
““The moment you accept that this is not possible, to fight for both sides at the same time, you lost your soul.””
The way this AIW is formulated sets up a false dichotomy:
oppressed ↔ oppressor
good guy ↔ bad guy
friend ↔ enemy
my tribe ↔ their tribe
This type of identity politics gives rise to a feeling of “stick it to the man”. This leads to a feeling of wanting to sanction one side while giving a pass to the other.
You see this in the declaration of moral outrage against the Israeli government but not against Hamas.
You see this in the call for sanctions against Israel but not against the enemies of Israel.
My question is:
Which is more important: taking sides or upholding a world where liberation is real and we all thrive?
